The department wants to bump its full-time staff from the current 4,025 to 4,328. And the agency wants more money for management, asking for $2.54 billion for administrative expenses, a roughly $280 million increase over current funding, or about 14 percent.

Adding to the department's burden, according to the budget document? "Implementation of complex new competitive grant programs, like Investing in Innovation" as well as growing responsibilities when it comes to student financial aid, including processing FAFSA forms. The agency even included this helpful chart to show why it's stretched so thin.

The House and Senate committees that deal with education spending are expected to meet this month and begin hashing out bills that finance the department and other agencies. In fact, the House subcommittee that controls K-12 spending is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to consider its bill.

There's also language in the House bill to renew the ESEA aimed at slimming down the department's workforce. So Congress isn't exactly in a spend-money-on-federal-employees'-salaries kind of mood.

Plus, the changes to the student loan program, and new competitive grants remain pretty controversial in Congress. It's hard to imagine that lawmakers would give the Obama administration more money to implement programs it doesn't particularly like.

Not great news, I suppose, if you're an Education Department employee burning the midnight oil to get waiver applications approved before the start of the school year.

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